These two metrical charms, written
in alliterative verse, were found in 1841 by George Waitz among the literary
treasures of the Cathedral at Merseburg
on leaf 84a of
Parchment Manuscript No. 68. Although the
manuscript itself dates from the tenth century, the language, style, and meter within
the document indicate an earlier date. Their primary significance lies
in the preservation of eight names of ancient Germanic heathen deities, many
with direct counterparts in the Poetic and Prose Eddas. The Merseburger
Zauber or Merseburg Charms were first published in a paper by Jacob Grimm
read before the Royal Academy of Sciences [Konigl. Akademie der
Wissenschaften] in Berlin on Feburary 3rd, 1842.

The first charm introduces the Old German Idisi, most likely the Valkyries of
Scandinavian mythology, who tend to the fortunes of war. In the second
charm, Wodan cures Balder's horse of lameness, after four named
goddesses fail in their efforts to do so. The event described in here may be an otherwise
unknown mythic episode which
presaged Balder's death.

"What has survived of pagan poetry in the German
language consists of two charms—the so-called Mersesburg Incantations—and
the fragmentary Lay of Hildebrand. ...The incantations above mentioned
hardly belong to literature in the restricted sense of the word, but they
are interesting because, while preserved in a manuscript of the tenth
century, they are pure products of paganism and afford proof positive of the
antiquity of the type to which they belong. The type, which is found also in
English, Danish, and other languages, consists of two parts: first a short
narrative, in which it is told how the spell was first employed by some
divine being; secondly, the potent formula itself. The first of the
Merseburg charms is a cure for the sprained leg of a horse, the second a
charm to effect the liberation of a fettered prisoner. " —Calvin Thomas, A
History of German Literature (1909)

Phol and Wodan rode into the woods,There Balder's foal sprained its foot.It was charmed by Sinthgunt, her sister Sunna;It was charmed by Frija, her sister Volla;It was charmed by Wodan, as he well knew how:

This verse is among the
primary evidence for the existence of the Æsir on the
European continent. The verse is unique in that it names
a group of gods, some known: Odin, his wife Frigg, and
their son Baldur,
and her sister Fulla. And some unknown: Phol, and
Sihntgunt. The latter we can identify by her sister,
Sunna (the sun). Sihntgunt (which may mean "she who
battles her way at night") is likely the moon.
Since she rides closest to Baldur, we might surmise that
she is identical to Nanna, Baldur's wife. Sunna is
her sister. Vafthrudnismal speaks of a daughter of
Sol who will take her place after Ragnarök. Similarly,
Nanna might have been conceived as a daughter of the
moon god, Mani. The name Sihntgunt
does not appear elsewhere.

This source is the first to name
Baldur. His horse is the subject of the verse. In the
first line, Phol and Odin (Baldur's father) ride into
the woods. With them is Odin's wife and Baldur's mother,
Frigg. Thus we suspect that this may be a family outing.
If so, Phol is probably an alternate name for the god
Baldur. It is not unusual that a god be designated by
two names in the space of a single verse. There is some
evidence that a god known as Phol and Fal was worshipped
among the continental Germans (see Grimm's Teutonic
Mythology). Snorri associates Baldur with the region of
West-phalia, which may be formed from the same name.

Phol and
Sinthgunt

All of the names of the gods and godddesses mentioned
here have counterparts in the Eddas except Phol and
Sinthgunt.

"A number of questions arise in connection with this
interesting relic of German antiquity. Is the Phol of
the first line identical with the Balder of the second
line? Is the Balder here mentioned identical with the
beautiful, luminous god Balder of Norse mythology? Is
Sinthgunt the Moon? And what significance
attaches to the personification of the Sun? " —Frederick
H. Wilkens (1905)

"The contents of this charm are thus: two gods Wodan (=
Odin) and Pol or Phol ride together to the woods, where
one's horse sprains his foot. It is charmed first by
four goddesses and then by Odin, who heals the injury.
By all appearances, Phol must be the injured horse's
master, since he alone is regarded as a kind of patient,
who consequently does not participate in the healing.
However, this is comparatively immaterial, and one can
very well allow that Odin is designated by the word
"balderes." That it alludes to a third person named
Balder however
is hardly conceivable, since this is forbidden by the
context: it is the only Phol and Wodan who ride into the
forest. In Anglo-Saxon, the word means "Lord," and we
must suppose that Balder was an epithet for Odin or
Phol. But who is this Phol?

"It is scarcely possible that a god, who was so genteel
he rode in company with Odin, was able to so completely
disappear that he has left behind no mark in the
mythological sources we have, and yet it seems that way,
because no one has been able to find a Germanic
god, who is thought to hide behind a Pol or Phol,
with any degree of plausibility. And to this
peculiarity joins another. The name has been written
Pol, but then over the line the scribe has added a small
h, so that the name becomes Phol. One suspects then feel
that this has been done for alliteration (because the
words then read: Pfol ende Wodan fuorun zi holza).
The result is still rather meager, because ph (= pf) is
in every instance a weak alliteration for v (=f) in
vuornn. And besides, one would expect the god-pair
Phol ende Wodan to have allitterated like
Sinhtgunt and Sunna and Friia and Volla. " —Henrik
Schück (1904)

"Grimm seems to refer [bonfires lit at Beltane] to the cult of Baldr or
Baeldseg, with which he connects the name Beltane; but
taking all the circumstances into consideration, I am
inclined to attribute it rather to Frea [Freyr], if not
even to a female form of the same godhead, Fricge, the
Aphrodite of the North. Frea [Freyr] seems to have been
a god of boundaries; probably as the giver of fertility
and increase, he gradually became looked upon as a
patron of the fields. On two occasions his name occurs
in such boundaries, and once in a manner which proves
some tree to have been dedicated to him. In a charter of
the year 959 we find these words: "'ðonne andlang
herðaftes on Frigedaeges treów,"—thence along the road
to Friday's (that is Frea's) tree
[Cod. Dipl. No. 1221]; and in a similar document
of the same century we have a boundary running "oð ðone
Frigedaeg." There is a place yet called Fridaythorpe, in
Yorkshire. Here Frigedaeg appears to be a formation
precisely similar to Baeldaeg, Swaefdaeg, and Waegdaeg,
and to mean only Frea himself.

"Baldaeg, in Old Norse BALDR, in Old-German PALTAC.—The
appearance of Baeldaeg among Woden's sons in the
Anglo-Saxon genealogies, would naturally lead us to the
belief that our forefathers worshiped that god whom the
Edda and other legends of the North term Baldr, the
father of Brand, and the Phoebus Apollo of Scandinavia.
Yet beyond these genealogies we have very little
evidence of his existence. It is true that the word
bealdor very frequently occurs in Anglo-Saxon
poetry as a peculiar appellative of kings,—nay even as a
name of God himself,—and that it is, as far as we know,
indeclinable, a sign of its high antiquity. This word
may then probably have obtained a general signification
which at first did not belong to it, and been retained
to represent a king, when it had ceased to represent a
god. There are a few places in which the name of Balder
can yet be traced: thus Baldersby in Yorkshire,
Balderston in Lancashire, Bealderesleah and
Baldheresbeorh in Wiltshire: of these the two first may
very likely have arisen from Danish or Norwegian
influence, while the last is altogether uncertain. Save
in the genealogies the name Baeldaeg does not occur at
all.

"But there is another name under
which the Anglo-Saxons may possibly have known this god,
and that is Pol or Pal.

"In the
year 1842 a very extraordinary and very interesting
discovery was made at Merseberg: upon the spare leaf of
a MS. there were found two metrical spells in the
Old-German language: these upon examination were at once
recognized not only to be heathen in their character,
but even to contain the names of heathen gods, perfectly
free from the ordinary process of Christianization.

"The general character of
this poem is one well known to us: there are
many Anglo-Saxon spells of the same description.
What makes this valuable beyond all that have
ever been discovered, is the
number of genuine heathen names that survive in
it, which in others of the same kind have been
replaced by other sanctions; and which teach us
the true meaning of those which have survived in
the altered form. In a paper read before the
Royal Academy of Sciences in Berlin, Grimm
identified Phol with Baldr, and this view he has
further developed in the new edition of his
Mythology. It is confirmatory of this view that
we possess the same spell in England, without
the heathendom, and where the place of the god
Baldr is occupied by that of our Lord himself.
The English version of the spell runs thus:

The lord rade,
and the foal slade;
He lighted
and he righted;
set joint to joint
and bone to bone,
sinew to sinew.
Heal, in the Holy Ghost's name!

"It will be admitted that this is something more
than a merely curious coincidence, and that it
leads to an induction of no little value. Now it
appears to me that we have reasonable ground to
believe our version quite as ancient and quite
as heathen as the German one which still retains
the heathen names, and that we have good right
to suppose that it once referred to the same
god.

"How then was this god named in England? Undoubtedly Pol
or Pal of such a god we have some obscure traces in
England. We may pass over the Appolyn and Apollo, whom
many of our early romancers number among the Saxon gods,
although the confused remembrance of an ancient and
genuine divinity may have lurked under this foreign
garb, and confine ourselves to the names of places
bearing signs of Pol or Pal. Grimm has shown that the
dikes called Phalgraben in Germany are much more likely
to have been originally Pfolgraben, and his conclusion
applies equally to Palgrave, two parishes in Norfolk and
Suffolk :—so Wodnes Dic, and the Devil's Dike between
Cambridge and Newmarket. Polebrooke in Northamptonshire,
Polesworth in Warwickshire, Polhampton in Hants,
Polstead in Suffolk, Polstead close under Wanborough
(Wodnesbeorh) in Surrey, —which is remarkable for the
exquisite beauty of its springs of water,—Polsden in
Hants, Polsdon in Surrev, seem all of the same class. To
these we must add Polsley and Pol thorn, which last name
would seem to connect the god with that particular tree:
last, but not least, we have in Poling, in Sussex, the
record of a race of Polingas, who may possibly have
carried up their genealogy to Baeldaeg in this form."
—John Kemble (1849).

"Baldr, gen. Baldrs, reappears in the OHG. proper
name Paltar (in Meichelbeck no. 450. 460. 611); and in
the AS. bealdor, baldor, signifying a lord, prince,
king, and seemingly used only with a gen. pl. before it:
gumena baldor, Cædm. 163, 4. wigena baldor, Jud. 132,
47. sinca bealdor, Beow. 4852. winia bealdor 5130. It is
remarkable that in the Cod. exon 276, 18 mæða bealdor
(virginum princeps) is said even of a maiden. I know of
only a few examples in the ON.: baldur î brynju, Sæm.
272b, and herbaldr 218b are used for a hero in general;
atgeirs baldr (lanceae vir), Fornm. sög. 5, 307. This
conversion from a proper name to a noun appellative
exactly reminds us of fráuja, frô, freá, and the ON.
týr. As bealdor is already extinct in AS. prose, our
proper name Paltar seems likewise to have died out
early; heathens songs in OHG may have known a paltar =
princeps. Such Gothic forms as Baldrs, gen. Baldris, and
baldrs (princeps), may fairly be assumed.

"This Baldrs would in strictness appear to have no
connexion with the Goth. balþs (bold, audax), nor Paltar
with the OHG. pald, nor Baldr with the ON. ballr
[[dangerous, dire]]. As a rule, the Gothic ld is
represented by ON. ld and OHG. lt: the Gothic lþ by ON.
ll and OHG. ld. But the OS. and AS. have ld in both
cases, and even in Gothic, ON. and OHG. a root will
sometimes appear in both forms in the same language; so
that a close connexion between balþs and Baldrs, pald
and Paltar, is possible after all. On mythological
grounds it is even probable: Balder's wife Nanna is also
the bold one, from nenna to dare; in Gothic she would
have been Nanþô from nanþjan, in OHG. Nandâ from
gi-nendan. The Baldr of the Edda may not distinguish
himself by bold deeds, but in Saxo he fights most
valiantly; and neither of these narratives pretends to
give a complete account of his life. Perhaps the Gothic
Balthae (Jornandes 5, 29) traced their origin to a
divine Balþ or Baldrs (see Suppl.).

"Yet even this meaning of the 'bold' god or hero might
be a later one: the Lith. baltas and Lett. balts signify
the white, the good; and by the doctrine of
consonant-change, baltas exactly answers to the Goth.
balþs and OHG. pald. Add to this, that the AS.
genealogies call Wôden's son not Bealdor, Baldor, but
Bældæg, Beldeg, which would lead us to expect an OHG.
Paltac, a form that I confess I have nowhere read. But
both dialects have plenty of other proper names
compounded with dæg and tac: OHG. Adaltac, Alptac,
Ingatac, Kêrtac, Helmtac, Hruodtac, Regintac, Sigitac;
OS. Alacdag, Alfdag (Albdag, Pertz 1, 286), Hildidag,
Liuddag, Osdag, Wulfdag; AS. Wegdæg, Swefdæg; even the
ON. has the name Svipdagr. Now, either Bældæg simply
stands for Bealdor, and is synonymous with it (as e.g.,
Regintac with Reginari Sigitac with Sigar, Sigheri); or
else we must recognise in the word dæg, dag, tac itself
a personification, such as we found another root
undergoing (p. 194-5) in the words div, divan, dina,
dies; and both alike would express a shining one, a
white one, a god. Prefixing to this the Slavic bièl,
bèl, we have no need to take Bældæg as standing for
Bealdor or anything else, Bæl-dæg itself is white-god,
light-god, he that shines as sky and light and day, the
kindly Bièlbôgh, Bèlbôgh of the Slav system (see
Suppl.). It is in perfect accord with this explanation
of Bæl-dæg, that the AS. tale of ancestry assigns to him
a son Brond, of whom the Edda is silent, brond, brand,
ON. brandr [[fire brand or blade of a sword]],
signifying jubar, fax, titio. Bældæg therefore, as
regards his name, would agree with Berhta, the bright
goddess.

"...So much the more valuable are the revelations of
the Merseburg discovery; not only are we fully assured
now of a divine Balder in Germany, but there emerges
again a long-forgotten mythus, and with it a new name
unknown even to the North.

"When, says the lay, Phol (Balder) and Wodan were one
day riding in the forest, one foot of Balder's foal,
'demo Balderes volon,' was wretched out of joint,
whereupon the heavenly habitants bestowed their best
pains on setting it right again, but neither Sinngund
and Sunna, nor yet Frûa and Folla could do any good,
only Wodan the wizard himself could conjure and heal the
limb (see Suppl.).

"The whole incident is as little known to the Edda as to
other Norse legends. Yet what was told in a heathen
spell in Thuringia before the tenth century is still in
its substance found lurking in conjuring formulas known
to the country folk of Scotland and Denmark (conf. ch.
XXXVIII, Dislocation), except that they apply to Jesus
what the heathens believed of Balder and Wodan.

"...The horse of Balder, lamed and checked on his
journey, acquired a full meaning the moment we think of
him as the god of light or day, whose stoppage and
detention must give rise to serious mischief on the
earth. Probably the story in its context could have
informed us of this; it was foreign to the purpose of
the conjuring spell.

"The names of the four goddesses will be discussed in
their proper place; what concerns us here is, that
Balder is called a second and hitherto unheard-of name,
Phol. The eye for our antiquities often merely wants
opening: a noticing of the unnoticed has resulted in
clear footprints of such a god being brought to our
hand, in several names of places.

"In Bavaria there was a Pholesauwa, Pholesouwa, ten or
twelve miles from Passau, which the Traditiones
patavienses first mention in a document drawn up between
774 and 788 (MB. vol 28, pars 2, p. 21, no. 23), and
afterwards many later ones of the same district: it is
the present village of Pfalsau. Its composition with aue
quite fits in with the suppostion of an old heathen
worship. The gods were worshipped not only on mountains,
but on 'eas' inclosed by brooks and rivers, where
fertile meadow yielded pasture, and forest shade. Such
was the castum nemus of Nerthus in an insula Oceani,
such Fosetesland with its willows and well-springs, of
which more presently. Baldrshagi (Balderi pascuum),
mentioned in the Friðþiofssaga, was an enclosed
sanctuary (griðastaðr), which none might damage. I find
also that convents, for which time-hallowed venerable
sites were preferred, were often situated in 'eas'; and
of one nunnery the very word used: 'in der megde ouwe,'
in the maids' ea (Diut. 1, 357). The
ON. mythology supplies us with several eas named after
the loftiest gods: Oðinsey (Odensee) in Fünen, another
Oðinsey (Onsöe) in Norway, Fornm. sög. 12, 33, and
Thôrsey, 7, 234. 9, 17; Hlêssey (Lässöe) in the
Kattegat, &c., &c. We do not know any OHG. Wuotanesouwa,
Donarsouwa, but Pholesouwa is equally to the point."
— Jakob Grimm (1844).

"Of the names occurring in this strophe Uodan-Odin,
Baldur, Sunna (synonym of Sol - Alvíssmál 16; Prose Edda
- Nafnaþulur), Friia-Frigg, and Volla-Fulla are well
known in the Icelandic mythic records. Only Phol and
Sinhtgunt are strangers to our mythologists, though
Phol-Falr surely ought not to be so.

In regard to the German form Phol, we find that it has
by its side the form Fal in German names of places
connected with fountains. Jakob Grimm has pointed out a
"Pholes" fountain in Thuringia, a "Fals" fountain in the
Frankish Steigerwald, and in this connection a "Baldur"
well in Reinphaltz.1 In the Danish popular traditions
Baldur's horse had the ability to produce fountains by
tramping on the ground, and Baldur's fountain in Seeland
is said to have originated in this manner (cp. P. E.
Muller2 on Saxo, Hist., 120). In Saxo, too, Baldur gives
rise to wells (Victor Balderus, ut afflictum siti
militem opportuni liquoris beneficio recrearet, novos
humi latices terram altius rimatus operuit - Book 3).

...This very circumstance seems to indicate that Phol,
Fal, was a common epithet or surname of Baldur in
Germany, and it must be admitted that this meaning must
have appeared to the German mythologists to be confirmed
by the Second Merseburg Charm; for in this way alone
could it be explained in a simple and natural manner,
that Baldur is not named in the first line as Odin's
companion, although he actually attends Odin, and
although the misfortune that befalls "Baldur's foal" is
the chief subject of the narrative, while Phol on the
other hand is not mentioned again in the whole formula,
although he is named in the first line as Odin's
companion.

This simple and incontrovertible conclusion, that Phol
and Baldur in the Second Merseburg Charm are identical
is put beyond all doubt by a more thorough examination
of the Norse records. In these it is demonstrated that
the name Falr was also known in the North as an epithet
of Baldur.

"...Their identity is furthermore confirmed by the
fact that Baldur in early Christian times was made a
historical king of Westphalia. The statement concerning
this, taken from Anglo-Saxon or German sources, has
entered into the foreword to Gylfaginning. Nearly all
lands and peoples have, according to the belief of that
time, received their names from ancient chiefs. The
Franks were said to be named after one Francio, the East
Goth after Ostrogotha, the Angles after Angul, Denmark
after Dan, etc. The name Phalia, Westphalia, was
explained in the same manner, and as Baldur's name was
Phol, Fal, this name of his gave rise to the name of the
country in question. For the same reason the German poem
Biterolf makes Baldur (Paltram) into king ze Pülle.
(Compare the local name Pölde, which, according to J.
Grimm, is found in old manuscripts written Polidi and
Pholidi.) In the one source Baldur is made a king in
Pholidi, since Phol is a name of Baldur, and in the
other source he is for the same reason made a king in
Westphalia, since Phal is a variation of Phol, and
likewise designated Baldur.

"The misfortune which happened first to Baldur and
then to Baldur's horse must be counted among the
warnings which foreboded the death of the son of Odin.11
There are also other passages which indicate that
Baldur's horse must have had a conspicuous signification
in the mythology, and the tradition concerning Baldur as
rider is preserved not only in northern sources
(Lokasenna 28, Gylfaginning), and in the Second
Merseburg Charm, but also in the German poetry of the
Middle Ages. That there was some witchcraft connected
with this misfortune which happened to Baldur's horse is
evident from the fact that the galdur songs sung by the
goddesses accompanying him availed nothing. According to
the Norse ancient records, the women particularly
exercize the healing art of galdur (compare Gróa and
Sigurdrífa), but still Odin has the profoundest
knowledge of the secrets of this art; he is galdurs
faðir (Vegtamskviða 3). And so Odin comes in this
instance, and is successful after the goddesses have
tried in vain. We must fancy that the goddesses make
haste to render assistance in the order in which they
ride in relation to Baldur, for the event would lose its
seriousness if we should conceive Odin as being very
near to Baldur from the beginning, but postponing his
activity in order to shine afterwards with all the
greater magic power, which nobody disputed.

"The goddesses constitute two pairs of sisters:
Sinhtgunt and her sister Sunna, and Frigg and her sister
Fulla. According to the Norse sources, Frigg is Baldur's
mother. According to the same records, Fulla is always
near Frigg, enjoys her whole confidence, and wears a
diadem as a token of her high rank among the goddesses.
12 An explanation of this is furnished by the Second
Merseburg Charm, which informs us that Fulla is Frigg's
sister, and so a sister of Baldur's mother. And as Odin
is Baldur's father, we find in the Second Merseburg
Charm the Baldur of the Norse records, surrounded by the
kindred assigned to him in these records.

"Under such circumstances it would be strange,
indeed, if Sinhtgunt and the sun-dis, Sunna, did not
also belong to the kin of the sun-god, Baldur, as they
not only take part in this excursion of the Baldur
family, but are also described as those nearest to him,
and as the first who give him assistance.

"The Norse records have given to Baldur as wife Nanna,
daughter of that divinity which under Odin's supremacy
is the ward of the atmosphere and the owner of the
moon-ship. If the continental Teutons in their
mythological conceptions also gave Baldur a wife devoted
and faithful as Nanna, then it would be in the highest
degree improbable that the Second Merseburg Charm should
not let her be one of those who, as a body-guard, attend
Baldur on his expedition to the forest. Besides Frigg
and Fulla, there are two goddesses who accompany Baldur.
One of them is a sun-dis, as is evident from the name
Sunna; the other, Sinhtgunt, is, according to Bugge's
discriminating interpretation of this epithet, the dis
"who night after night has to battle her way." A goddess
who is the sister of the sun-dis, but who not in the
daytime but in the night has to battle on her journey
across the sky, must be a goddess of the moon, a
moon-dis. This moon-goddess is the one who is nearest at
hand to bring assistance to Baldur. Thus she can be none
else than Nanna, who we know is the daughter of the
owner of the moon-ship. The fact that she has to battle
her way across the sky is explained by the Norse mythic
statement, according to which the wolf-giant Hati is
greedy to capture the moon, and finally secures it as
his prey (Völuspá, Gylfaginning).

"...The name Nanna (from the verb nenna; cp.
Vigfusson's Dictionary, Lexicon Poeticum) means "the
brave one." With her husband she has fought the battles
of light, and in the Norse, as in the Germanic,
mythology, she was with all her tenderness a heroine."
—Viktor Rydberg (1882)

Vigfusson defines nenna as "to strive, to travel" and
Egilsson as udøve med kraft og raskhed "to strive with
force and speed." The connection between Nanna and nenna
was first made by Grimm in DM Vol. I, Ch. 11: "On
mythological grounds it is even probable: Baldur's wife
Nanna is also the bold one from nenna, to dare." Jan De
Vries relates it to the Germanic root nanþ-, giving the
meaning "the daring one." (Altergermanishe
Religiongeschichte, Berlin 1970).